Hope you are having a wonderful summer:) Got some big news to share with you....

My current film, Hit Man to Hero, just launched our trailer and
IndieGoGo campaign!! I told my producers that our friends would step up
and support this fundraiser, so take about 5 minutes to check everything
out and consider giving a little to help us finish this film!! http://bit.ly/MCwW7d

Screenings have slowed down for us a little since school got out,
but we did end up winning the "Visionary Award" at the Awareness Film
Festival in LA and just got back from a fun screening at the Gathering
in Indianapolis!!!

We've had a few incredible interviews recently: We were absolutely
blown away by Gregg Mullen and the team at HEC TV. Their story on GAD?
was possibly our best story ever. You need to check it out !!!!!!!!!! http://t.co/ks5YXSpb . Also, here is an hour long interview with Dan on "World Poverty" with Lillian Brummet http://t.co/w6VIlMhc

Been a busy few months since you last heard from us!! We were occupied
with screenings/presentations at Overflow Coffee Bar, the Africa World
Doc Fest, SLU, Univ. of Oklahoma, Omaha Film Fest, Broadway Bean Coffee
shop, LES Film Fest, Maryville Univ., MIIIE Conference, St. Louis
Christian College, Univ. of Evansville, and Southeast MO State. With our new agent, Contemporary Issues Agency, we
hope to continue to do many more next school year!! Let us know if you
are interested in booking an event!

We want to invite all our LA friends to come out to our screening at the Awareness Film Fest
in LA on May 5th at 7pm. Dan will be in town for the Biola Media
Conference and will be at the screening for Q&A and merch sales.
Check out the facebook event. Also that day our film will be screening at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Excited to hear how an African audience responds!

Our Spring tour is kicking in to gear and we
have a ton of cool events and festivals coming up. We our official
selection for the "Africa World Documentary Film Fest" and the "Omaha
Film Fest." Here is our upcoming schedule:

Happy Holidays! It's almost 2012!! Just wanted to follow up on our last update, tell you some cool facts about our 2011 Fall Tour, and some new exciting news about my next film!!

First, as we mentioned in our last update,
we had three more big screenings left. Missouri state was the 1st. They
treated us really incredible, fed us, and then about 100 students
showed up to the film and we had our usual 30 min Q&A. On Dec 15th,
we also had an great screening at the St. Louis Scholarship Foundation
and they served some authentic African food to the group!

The big screening was our screening at Skepticon, the 2nd largest
Athiest conference in the country. About 400 people came out and we
received a standing ovation and had a lively Q&A. Check out the
video for yourself:) http://bit.ly/u9U3v9

This last Saturday was a big day for GAD? and When the Saints. We had
about 250 people come out to our morning screening at the St. Louis
International Film Fest. All three of us were there for the Q
& A .

Even bigger news was the success of the 'When the Saints' banquet . David had set a goal to raise $30,000 in one night towards
the rehabilitation home in Malawi, and I wasn't sure if it was doable.
The banquet had about 300 people show up, and at the end of the night
David and his team had raised $28,368 and in the last few days has
almost hit the $30,000 mark! What a night, this home is definitely
getting built in Malawi to rescue young girls who are victims of sexual
exploitation. Go to http://www.whenthesaints.com for more info...

So it's been awhile since I've posted so I figured I'd write
an update. So much has happened in the last two months and we are
all excited with the film's progress. We are proud to announce that
we won "Best Documentary Feature" at the Stella Artois
Cinema STL Filmmakers Showcase, due largely to the enthusiasm of the
fans that attended our sold out festival WIP(Work in Progress)
debut.

The production of Give a Damn? over the last four
years has been a roller coaster of accomplishment and disappointment
which has tested our resolve on multiple occasions to complete the
film that we set out to make. There was a period of 3-4 months
that I completely withdrew from the project due to frustration and
the financial opportunity cost that were a byproduct of chasing our
dream. After watching the film with 440 people and receiving a
standing ovation, I was overcome by a feeling of much needed closure
and excitement. For the first time in many years I felt that
sacrifice and struggle were finally overshadowed by success of the
film. Dan and I were in attendance for this showing, however David
was unable to attend because he was in Malawi working on his non-profit "When The Saints".

Although Dan and I very
much enjoyed the screening, it did not feel complete with David not
in attendance. Soon after the Tivoli screening, David returned
to the country and now it is amazing to have had the full team
present for the most recent screenings of the film. Although we
are all very different, we are starting to merge very well as a
presentation team and the Q and A section of the film has been very
strong because of that.

After years of begging the public to
take notice, people are starting to pay attention and interest in the
film seems to be exploding. Although the film has not had it's
official red carpet premiere, we are currently touring the WIP cut
around the STL area at college and high school campus's. The
first two screenings at Washington University and Florissant Valley
Community College were very well received and we are excited for the
handful of dates that we have lined up in the next month or so.

The
other big news that I have is that we were excepted into Heartland
International Film Festival as well as the St. Louis
International Film Festival, taking place in October and November
respectively. Both are major film festivals (St. Louis is an Oscar qualifier) and needless to
say we are extremely excited to be a part of these festivals.

I will jump right into whats going on! Since the last update, we have
put most of our focus into making our Advanced Screening on Aug 14th,
2:30pm at the Tivoli (considered by many the best independent theater in
Saint Louis) a success!

Thus far we have over 200 people committed on facebook and have been all over the local news. Today I was live on Ch.2, yesterday Rob and I were on Ch.5, and yesterday we also had a fabulous article in the local paper.
This Thursday we will be on Ktrs 550AM with McGraw Milhaven at 9am and
then on Friday we will be on the local NPR news station around 11am.
Follow our twitter if you want to know the exact details when we find out more!! Thinking we might come close to selling out the 400 seats:)

There is a story in the Bible about a blind man that Jesus comes across and his
disciples ask why was the guy like that? Was it because of his own sin or the sin of his parents?

Sometimes people ask me similar questions. So do you think the film didn't go as planned because you didn't make it explicitly about God? Some people may think its my fault or other people on the teams fault that we didn't raise the money we originally planned to raise, got in the crash, or have not gotten into any major festivals. We always wonder when someone doesn't succeed whose to blame, just like the disciples did. Jesus response to the disciples question about the blind man always blows me away:

"This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." - Jesus

Jesus cut through all the blame and focused on the moment and said, "He is like this because of this one moment in history and how his healing, him coming out of this struggle, will lead to my glory."

I'm convinced that Give A Damn?'s destiny was to not be a story of pure success, where everything seemed to go our way. The way we were to glorify God was through overcoming the struggle...

So here how the things have gone: We had a sharp business plan, cool website and fun videos hoping that an investor would jump on board and fund our trip. No go. Then we decided to grassroots fundraise, and after 36 fundraisers and nearly a year, we just barely had enough money to do the trip. By that time I am burnt out on everything and the first month of the journey is a chance to decompress from the last few years and have a tangible practical goal to accomplish.